The Looters (28 page)

In a landmark case, salvagers who spent enormous amounts of time and money finding the lost wrecks of two Spanish ships,
La Galga
(sunk in 1802) and
Juno
(lost in 1750), off the coast of Virginia, were barred from recovering the contents of the vessels. Despite the fact that the ships went down nearly 200 and 250 years ago, respectively, a federal court decided that the ships still belonged to Spain.

In supporting Spain, the United States seeks to insure that its sunken vessels and lost crews are treated as sovereign ships and honored graves, and are not subject to exploration, or exploitation, by private parties seeking treasures of the sea.

—Sea
Hunt, Inc., v. Unidentified Shipwrecked Vessels, Kingdom of Spain, et al
, U. S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit (June 21, 2000)

Chapter 43

I couldn’t believe I was accusing him of murder again.

He threw his hands up at the sky and beseeched the heavens, “Lord, keep me from cutting this woman up for fish bait and throwing the pieces to the sharks.”

We were still a hundred yards from the fishing boat. He cut the engine. We sat basking in the sun while I digested what he’d said.

“Why are you telling me all this?” I finally asked.

“My associates aren’t going to be very happy if I bring you aboard babbling like a harpy how you’re going to put all of us in prison. And I’m doing it to help you get your thinking straight. You are on the run from the police because you’re part of the same daisy chain as Lipton, me, and—”

“That’s nonsense; I had nothing to do with the robbery.”

“If there wasn’t a market for the loot, we wouldn’t have stolen it. It’s called receiving stolen property. Lipton told us that he already had a person who would buy the pieces.”

The statement hit home so hard that I was speechless. “It wasn’t me. The robbery took place years before I became curator.”

“He didn’t give a name; maybe you were just handy when it came time to start pushing the stuff. We all agreed that he’d hold back several years before a single piece even hit the market. But you’re the one who he unloaded on finally.”

“That wasn’t my fault. I knew nothing about the looting.”

My defense came out as a whisper and sounded false even to me. True, I didn’t know for sure that the pieces were from the museum. But I didn’t look too hard, either.

Coby leaned over and patted me on the knee. “Look, I told you, me and my buddies figure that what’s been under the sea for hundreds or thousand of years is up for grabs for the people who have the guts and know-how to recover it. We made an exception for the Iraqi museum heist because we figured it wasn’t just stealing. It would keep the stuff out of the hands of people worse than us. I’m not telling you we’re angels, but we aren’t into murder.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“Not yet, anyway.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that we aren’t ready to spend the rest of our lives in prison because someone rolled over on us.”

I thought about the call I had made to Agent Nunes, but I kept a straight face. “I can be trusted—”

He held up his hand. “Please. Nobody can be trusted when the cops put the squeeze on. But that’s a bridge we can cross later. Right now we have to make sure we’re all operating on the same page. Let’s go meet the rest of the team.”

“Must I?”

He goosed the engine and directed us toward the larger boat. I was still in the dark as to what he had in mind—and why he was telling me so much. At least I hadn’t been murdered… yet.

“Tell me about the ship you’re salvaging.”

“The
Ronda
was a galleon that sailed from the New World with a bellyful of Inca gold back in the 1600s. It was headed for Cadiz, but the port was under attack by the British when it got there. It kept going, through the Straits, on a course for Malaga. It sank in a storm before it reached the port.”

He nodded down at the water. “It’s a grave of sailors and passengers besides being a treasure trove. We do honor to the bodies, holding a service before we start opening up the galleon to look for treasure. Nothing is removed from a skeleton. If there’s a valuable ring on a bony finger, it stays there. We’re sailors, too.”

“That should get you some leniency when the Spanish send you to prison for looting the ship.”

He sighed and shook his head. “You know, Madison, you’re really a good fuck, but you have a sharp tongue.”

A sharp tongue that can get me in trouble.

Chapter 44

We finally reached the larger boat and I went aboard to meet the band of pirates, smugglers, and thieves.

Three men, former SEALs who served with Coby, and the woman he said was half fish, Gwyn, a former Navy officer, made up the gang. The men were all chips off the old block of Coby… short hair, big pecks, firm abs, tight butts. Gwyn was an all-American tall, farm-fed blonde, with a butt that was going south. She had a wide smile, impish blue eyes, and a bottle of cold beer in her hand.

“Wow, underwater looting really has gone high-tech, hasn’t it,” I said, as I stared at the computers and monitors that served as tools of their nefarious trade.

“Let’s feed her to the sharks,” Gwyn said.

“I’m considering it,” Coby said. “Meet Moby Dick.”

He pointed at a monitor showing a remote operating vehicle inside the hole of the sunken ship. The ROV looked like it had been made with an Erector set. The steel creature’s electronic eyes—cameras—and arms and hands were the only humanoid features.

“Moby has a gentle touch. We use it because we don’t want to destroy what we recover.”

“I can understand that. You won’t be able to sell loot that’s broken.”

He gave me a thin smile. “We are concerned with preserving what we recover. Moby can pick up an egg.”

“Scrambled?” I asked.

From the looks on their faces, I wasn’t making any friends, but I was too disgusted—and too stupid—to stroke these people. Frankly, none of them looked ready to murder me. Yet.

“Here,” Coby said, “try it yourself. Then tell me that Moby isn’t gentle enough to pick up a baby.”

I sat down and he showed me how to work the controls. It really was harder than it looked… like rubbing your tummy and patting your head at the same time. Gwyn took a picture of me working the controls. She either was softening toward me or wanted a souvenir to keep after I was eaten by denizens of the deep.

Next they showed me some pieces of eight—Spanish silver coins—that had been brought up. I examined them closely. They were corroded from their centuries on the seafloor but could be easily cleaned. Gwyn snapped more pictures. I grinned and held up a coin so she would get a good shot.

“This is all very interesting, but what does this prove other than the fact that you people are really good at stealing antiquities off the bottom of the sea? And that you’re probably going to spend your best years in a small, low-tech prison cell. Why exactly did you want to put on a dog and pony show for me? Do you think I’d be a character witness at your trials?”

Coby smiled and gestured at his co-conspirators. “We wanted you to see that we’re human. And pretty nice people.”

“Wonderful. And what’s to keep me from going to the police and telling them what I saw today?”

“That’s easy. We work for you.”

“You what?”

“You and Lipton and your pal Viktor Milan hired us. That will be our story. What’s yours?

I chortled. “That’s stupid. Who would believe that?”

“Everyone who sees the pictures.”

“What pictures?”

“You using the robot to pick up contraband treasure off the bottom. You handling pieces of eight.”

Gwyn held up the camera and gave me a grin as she pretended to snap my picture.

“You dirty bastards. That’s blackmail.”

Coby failed to smother a grin. “I prefer to think of it as a negotiating point. The other alternative is that corpus delicti scenario you mentioned.”

If he knew I’d already called the FBI, I’d be fish bait.

***

I said good-bye to my new co-conspirators and got back into the speedboat for the trip back to the villa. Pissed.

“Don’t look so angry,” Coby said. “You could do worse for partners in crime.”

“Oh, I’m beyond that. I’m not angry at you; you’re only protecting yourself. I’m mad at myself. You were right when you said I was part of the looting of the Iraqi museum all along. I was. Not in body but soul. Without people like me who turn their heads at suspicious provenances, there wouldn’t be a market in contraband antiquities.”

“And most of the antiquities would be destroyed by the indigenous people who should be preserving them.”

I shook my head. “No, the fact that there are bad people willing to sell their cultural heritage to foreigners doesn’t justify what we do. If there weren’t willing buyers for the stolen artifacts, you wouldn’t have tomb robbers and museum looters even at the local level.”

“We can go on and on. Like so much in life, it’s a circle, a chicken or the egg scenario. You’re being too introspective and intellectual. This is the real world. Don’t forget that 99.9 percent of the items looted from the museum were taken by Iraqis themselves. And it was Iraqis hiding the atrocities of Saddam’s regime that destroyed the Iraqi library. These people have to take some responsibility for their own lawless society. We turned Iraq into chaos only because we removed Saddam and the big gun he held that kept everyone in line.”

We drove for a moment before I asked, “What do you think I should do now?” I almost broke out in a laugh. Was I really asking a modern-day pirate for advice?

“There are two things you have to deal with. The police are the easiest. They have zero against you. The provenance on the Semiramis is suspicious—but it takes more than suspicion to convict you of receiving stolen property. It takes proof. And that will be impossible for the police to obtain. Even if Lebanon turned into a haven for the FBI tomorrow, they wouldn’t be able to find evidence that rebuts what the provenance says was a handshake deal in a marketplace over a century ago. If you keep your mouth shut, the police will make a lot of noise but will eventually go away because they don’t have the evidence to charge you.”

“I hate to burst your bubble.” I told him about the document examiner’s report. I told him about the Times New Roman font, about the proportional spacing between letters.

“Who has the report?”

“Neal destroyed my copy. I suppose he destroyed his.”

“Lipton would have destroyed his. If not, it went up with the gallery.”

“That leaves Bensky.”

“Bensky’s dead. Gwyn saw it on the Internet. Pulled out of the river.”

“Jesus. The poor man.”

“Before you have too much sympathy for him, you should know he was in on framing you.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t any accident that the report got into your file without you knowing it. Lipton and your pal Neal needed someone to take a fall if everything went to hell. They paid Bensky to give you an all clear with a phone call, and then your pal had your assistant bury the report.” He grinned. “I got that heads-up from Lipton. I actually wrote the provenance and prepared the backup documents. They were intended to be good, but it would take more talent and time than I had to make them perfect enough to pass the world’s greatest experts. It had to get by only one expert—and he was getting paid to look the other way.”

Nothing surprised me any longer. But it didn’t quite jive. “But Neal destroyed the copy I had.”

“By that time, Bensky was probably murdered and his copies burned. There was too much coming down to put it all at your door. It was one thing to set you up to take a fall on buying the mask if they needed a fall guy for the police to go after, but when bodies started showing up… well, I talked to Lipton before his place got hit. He was in a panic. He said the police were outside. I’m sure he had the shredder going full blast.”

My head swirled. “This is so crazy.”

“No, it’s not. You’re talking about fifty-five million dollars. People do a lot more for a hell of a lot less. The person who made out like a bandit in the deal was your boss Piedmont. He stopped payment on the mask. And still has it. How many years do you think it will take the Iraqi government to recover it?”

“They’ll never recover it. With Abdullah’s evidence gone, they’ll never be able to prove it was stolen.”

Incredible. The rich get richer. Buying the mask had turned my life into a nightmare… and Hiram had the piece and the money.

***

We arrived at the dock and tied the boat up. I reached another conclusion by the time I walked by the boat shed filled with the contraband from the
Ronda
.

“One thing doesn’t make any sense to me. I can’t imagine Neal behind the London bombing. And murdering Abdullah and Bensky.”

“He’s not. The killer is the second thing you have to worry about.”

As we came around the boat shed I saw a man standing by a car at the road about two hundred feet away. He had something that looked familiar on his shoulder. It was pointed at us. I stared stupidly again as he fired.

Coby yelled and knocked me to the ground. A deafening explosion erupted. I felt the hot flaming wind of a blast and thousands of tiny pieces of debris.

Coby was up instantly, pulling me along with him. I moved mindlessly, with pure nervous energy, like a snake with its head cut off.

He pulled me around the corner of the shed. “Get back in the boat.”

We ran down the dock and jumped onto the speedboat. The “second thing” I had to worry about had just arrived.

Chapter 45

We roared off just seconds before a rocket hit the boathouse.

“Hold on,” Coby yelled.

He steered the boat on a zigzag course. I looked back and saw the man with the rocket launcher heading off the beach. The boathouse was damaged but still standing.

“Who is this man who wants to murder me?” I yelled.

Coby’s speedboat had the gravity compression feel of my XK Jag as we raced away from land. He phoned his fellow treasure hunters to lift anchor and follow suit, getting out of Spanish territorial waters… and out of rocket range.